Banca de DEFESA: THAINÁ LESSA PONTES SILVA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : THAINÁ LESSA PONTES SILVA
DATE: 21/03/2024
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: online
TITLE:

Biases and shortfalls in publicly available knowledge of Namibia's terrestrial biodiversity


KEY WORDS:

GBIF, occurrence records, survey effort, ignorance scores, species distributions, vertebrates, Southern Africa.


PAGES: 100
BIG AREA: Ciências Biológicas
AREA: Ecologia
SUMMARY:

Effective conservation efforts and predictions of future impacts on biodiversity depend heavily on publicly available information about species distributions. However, data on species distributions is often patchy, especially in many countries of the Global South where resources for biological surveys have been historically limited. In this study, we use ignorance scores to quantify and visualize gaps and biases in biodiversity data for Namibia, with a focus on five terrestrial taxa at a spatial scale of 10 x 10 km. We model the relationship between ignorance scores and socio-geographical variables using generalized additive models for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS). Our findings demonstrate that despite a high volume of occurrence records available on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), publicly available knowledge of Namibia's terrestrial biodiversity remains limited, with large areas contributing few or no records for key taxa. The exception is birds, which may be due to the influx of data from citizen science platforms. Our study also highlights the importance of citizen science initiatives for biodiversity knowledge and reinforces the usefulness of ignorance scores as an indicator of the relative availability and distribution of species occurrence records. However, further research, biological surveys, and renewed efforts to mobilize existing data are necessary to enhance biodiversity data coverage in countries with patchy data.


COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interno(a) - 1278133 - GUILHERME RAMOS DEMETRIO FERREIRA
Interno(a) - 2882780 - RICHARD JAMES LADLE
Interno(a) - 2269625 - ROBSON GUIMARAES DOS SANTOS
Externo(a) à Instituição - GEIZIANE TESSAROLO
Externo(a) à Instituição - ANA FILIPA PALMEIRIM
Notícia cadastrada em: 27/02/2024 08:49
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